Yes, everyone knew he was going to win. Yes, it was his neighbor state. And yes, he still has well-documented flaws.

But Romney made history as a nonincumbent Republican who has now won both Iowa and New Hampshire, and from here on he will be hard to stop.

Romney exceeded his own vote share from the 2008 primary, when he came in second. He also was on track to finish the night pretty close to the 38 percent of the vote John McCain got in that race, when he won the state.

Best of all, he was poised for a margin of victory exceeding 12 percentage points.

According to exit polls, the former Massachusetts governor did well across the ideological spectrum, making it hard to point to an area of weakness in his vote total. And Romney seemed comfortable in his speech, even addressing “rivals” over the criticism of his time at Bain Capital (a remark that’s really only a reference to Newt Gingrich) and basking in his supporters’ applause.

Having survived the evangelicals of Iowa and the famously ornery independents of New Hampshire, Romney now heads into South Carolina with momentum, making him the person undecided voters are likelier to tilt toward.

Romney backers aren’t certain he’ll fare well in the Palmetto State, where he’s facing his first crush of negative ads. It’s not clear how the spots dinging him for his tenure at Bain Capital will play in a GOP primary — as opposed to a general election (although Democrats will simultaneously be banging him from the left on that topic, and it’s not good for Romney to have members of his own party negatively defining him on his signature credential issue).

2) Jon Huntsman’s surge was real

It may have fallen short of the second place he seemed headed for. But Huntsman went from cellar-dweller in the polls to third place in a matter of about two weeks, a rise that earns him some measure of respect.

It also justifies his decision to keep going, at least through South Carolina and, if he can depress Romney’s vote total from the center and add to a sense of chaos in the race, even into Florida.

That may be wishful thinking on the part of Huntsman’s camp, which had spent months living in New Hampshire in hopes of getting hot, only to see it finally start happening in the final days of the race. Interestingly, it only happened once the rest of the candidates arrived in the Granite State en masse.

He wasn’t as close to Ron Paul as he would have liked to have been — he was running 5 percentage points behind him — but he still had a respectable finish.

What Huntsman has lacked is resources — his campaign has been on fumes for months, and the candidate himself has expressed a public reluctance to go beyond the $2 million he seeded his effort with earlier this year.

His boosters hope that his surprising third-place finish will help bring in some more financial support, but there’s still not much evidence he has a path to the nomination.

At a minimum, his vote share gives him a bit of a cleaner slate heading into 2016, the next presidential cycle and the one that many political insiders suspect he’s already eyeing.